


Rivers and Roads

by you_idjits



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Pining, Post-Season/Series 08, oh my god aNOTHER s8 fic what am i doing with my life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 00:10:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2792696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/you_idjits/pseuds/you_idjits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the angels fall, Cas lands in Cajamarca, Peru. But as he makes his way north, he calls when he can.<br/>Dean’s life moves from phone call to phone call. The hours, the days between are hazy streaks, like a blurred landscape through a rainy car window. Cas calls from a homeless shelter in Cajamarca, but for only a few minutes, and then again thirty miles south of the Ecuador border. They talk logistics, mostly, and skirt around more important things. Cas details his travels. Dean is sitting in a white hospital room, day after day, staring at his comatose brother, and meanwhile Cas is hitchhiking his way through South America.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rivers and Roads

Day one.

Dean’s cell phone rings. He fumbles with the buttons, nearly dropping it. The number is unfamiliar, and this is really not the time, but he picks up anyway. “This is Dean Winchester. Who are you and how did you get this number?”

And a very familiar, very tired voice says, “Dean, it’s me.”

Every muscle in his body tenses. “Cas?”

“Yes- listen, I don’t have long, I’m borrowing this man’s phone and- _si, gracias señor_ – I wanted to make sure you were all right. And Sam. Is Sam-”

“Hang on, whoa, was that Spanish? Where are you?”

Hesitation. “Peru, I think.”

“Peru- wait, what?”

“Somewhere high in altitude. By my estimations, not far from Cajamarca.”

“Sorry, did you just say _Peru_?”

“Dean.”

“Right, right, okay. What’s going on?”

“The angels, Dean. They’ve-”

“Fallen, I know. Did you do that?”

Further hesitation. “Metatron did. He tricked me. There were no trials; they were the ingredients for a spell. The last one- it was my grace.”  
It takes a minute to sink in, but once it does, it sinks to the bottom of Dean’s stomach. He grips the arm of the hospital chair until his knuckles go white. “Your grace. That means you haven’t just fallen, have you?”

The lack of an answer tells him enough. He grits his teeth and pushes on, “Okay, sure. But if that’s the case, you need to get here now. There are probably a lot of angels on your tail, but we can-” he catches himself, glances at Sam in the hospital bed, “I can protect you. I mean. If that’s. Can you. Peru?”

Whatever he means by that, Cas gets it. “I don’t know. I don’t have any money. Or food.”

Oh. Because if Cas is human, he has to think about food now. And a place to sleep. He can’t just angel-express his way to Dean’s side.

Dean wipes a hand down his face. “Look, Cas, I’d wire you the money for a flight if I could. Hell, I’d fly down there myself if I had to. But all our cash is going towards Sam’s medical bills right now, and I gotta… I gotta stay here. I can’t let anything happen to him.” Sam’s his number one priority. He has to be. That’s what Dean said in the church, and he’s sticking to it. He can’t do anything for Cas.

“Sam,” Cas says. “Oh. What’s wrong?”

Dean looks at his brother, at his pallid skin and the IV in his arm. “He’s. Um. He’s not doing so well. He’s in a coma, Cas. I don’t know what to do.” He says it quietly, like he once did when praying.

“Dean,” Cas says, and _damn,_ Dean needs him here. He needs it so much. “Dean,” Cas repeats, “I’m on my way. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll- I’ll find my way back, somehow.”

Dean swallows the lump in his throat. For the first time in a long time, they’re on the same page. “Okay. Be careful. You have a weapon?”

“Yes.”

“Take care of yourself.” He thinks he should say something more, like _eat your Wheaties_ or _don’t take rides from creepy old guys_ , but he can’t choke out the words. “Call when you can,” he manages.

“I promise,” Cas says. “And Dean? I-” Hesitation. “I’m sorry.”

Dean takes a weary breath. He doesn’t need to hear that anymore. “Cas. It’s okay. We’ll figure it out, just like we always do. Just… come home. Soon.”

The only response he gets is the hum of a dead line.

**

From there, Dean’s life moves from phone call to phone call. The hours, the days between are hazy streaks, like a blurred landscape through a rainy car window. Cas calls from a homeless shelter in Cajamarca, but for only a few minutes, and then again thirty miles south of the Ecuador border. They talk logistics, mostly, and skirt around more important things. Cas details his travels. Dean is sitting in a white hospital room, day after day, staring at his comatose brother, and meanwhile Cas is hitchhiking his way through South America.

“I take rides where I can get them, walk where I can’t,” he says during one call. Dean imagines it, imagines Cas with his thumb stuck skyward. Point in the direction you want to go, Dean had told him. Someone will pick you up and take you home.

They try to talk about Cas’s new, human life. Dean is afraid to touch the subject the way he is afraid to touch a hot stove. He’s no good at talking about important things. But talking over the phone, having that distance, makes it easier.

“It’s disorienting,” Cas says. “Everything is just so… loud. Amplified. The scrapes on my hands, the smells of the city. The sky is so bright, Dean. I never realized how bright it was.”

His phone doesn’t ring for four days after that. When it does, it’s late at night, and Dean is asleep in the chair by Sam’s bed. He scrambles awake, scrambles to answer.

Cas doesn’t offer a greeting, just says, “Tell me about your day. Tell me what the hospital is like.”

“Uh,” Dean says, “it’s boring. You know that, man. The nurse is kinda hot. The food sucks, and that’s coming from a guy who ate out of diners for thirty years of his life. It’s. Um. Cas? Are you okay?”

“Distract me, please.”

“Cas.”

There’s a pause, and Dean thinks he might be preparing to hang up, but then he says, “It’s cold. I’m cold.”

“It’s night there, isn’t it? Cas- where are you?”

Another pause, a longer one. Talking over the phone is hard for Dean; after five years they’ve developed a kind of silent communication, but that doesn’t work when they’re thousands of miles apart. “I’m on the roadside,” Cas says finally. “It’s nearly sunrise. It’s not that bad. I have – the last woman, she gave me some money, and there was a payphone. I thought.”

“Cas,” Dean says. “Oh, Cas. You can’t sleep out on the road, not when it’s cold. You have to stay warm. If you didn’t- and then- I couldn’t deal with that, Cas. You have to stay warm.”

He feels guilt slide through his veins, oily and cold. He should be doing something, something more than just talking over the phone. This is Cas – _Cas_.

“I’m going to start walking,” Cas says. “Maybe that will- that will help.”

“Okay,” Dean says, resigned, because what can he do? What can he do?

“I’ll call when I get to the ocean,” Cas says.

Dean imagines, for a moment, being at the ocean with Cas. He imagines the taste of salt in his mouth, the breeze burning his skin. He imagines getting sand in his shoes, and on his hands, and on his lips, on Cas’s lips, in Cas’s hair.

“Okay,” he says again.

**

The next time Cas calls, his breathing is heavy and uneven over the line.

“Cas? Cas, are you there?” Dean says, frantically, his stomach twisting in knots.

“I need,” Cas says, and Dean’s heart stammers for a beat, “I need. Dean. Tell me how to stitch up a wound.”

“Are you hurt?” Dean asks, even though he knows the answer.

“Dean. Please,” Cas wheezes. Dean imagines his lips are cracked, dry. “I have- I have dental floss, and a needle. That’s what you and Sam use.”

“Okay. Okay. Alcohol, can you get alcohol? Whiskey.”

“Just tell me how,” Cas says.

So Dean talks him through it. Cas is sitting at some goddamn payphone at some goddamn gas station stitching himself up, and all Dean can do is listen.

He gets out of his seat and starts pacing the hotel room. His cell phone is made of cheap plastic, his mouth tastes like hospital food, his brother is still comatose, and Cas is somewhere in northern Nicaragua bleeding out in a gas station. Dean thinks he might die here, right now, just like this. From stress, maybe.

That is, if Cas doesn’t die first. He makes pained cries through clenched teeth, and Dean feels the pain, a phantom ache underneath his skin. He hates this, he hates it more than anything.

He thinks, maybe, he needs Cas at his side even more than he needs Sam to wake up. Sam is safe – mostly – but Cas is, Cas is…

Cas finishes, or so he says, and the tension lessens. Dean imagines Cas slumped against the phone booth, blood slick on his hands and on the payphone.

“What,” Dean says, “what happened?”

“Demon,” Cas says. “Found me a few miles back. It must have recognized me; it slowed to pick me up. I let down my guard.”

“Cas,” Dean says. Oh, God. “Cas, tell me you killed it.”

“Yeah,” Cas says, and Dean lets out a breath. “But it got me, along my right side.”

“Is it bad?”

“Not the end of the world,” Cas says, and they both laugh. And then Cas winces, and curses. “Thank you. For the-”

“Don’t,” Dean says. “Just- don’t. Don’t thank me for that. And don’t ever make me do it again.”

Cas huffs, tired, which is close enough to a concession that Dean pushes on.

“You’re at a gas station, yeah? You have money?”

“No,” Cas says. “I came in bleeding and stumbling, so the attendant gave me the floss and the needle and the money for the phone. But I have nothing else.”

Dean digs his fingernails into the meat of his palm. “Can you get it? Can you steal something, or-”

“I. I could earn it,” says Cas. “This is a gas station. I’ve seen many, ah, truckers come through here. You once earned a fair amount of money at places like this, Dean.”

It takes a moment to sink in. “I- how did you know about that?” Which is maybe a dumb question, because Cas is – was – an angel. But Dean’s never told anybody about that, not even Sam. Especially not Sam.

He doesn’t have time for this, for wondering what Cas must think of him for it. He shakes his head. “You’re not doing that, okay?”

“But if I could-”

“ _No._ Cas. You’re not.” He thinks about the back alleyways of his youth, of that pervasive feeling of filth. He thinks about the way it’d seep under his skin and leave a bad taste in his mouth. He doesn’t want Cas to know that kind of rock bottom. Not now, when he’s so newly human. Not ever.

Cas pauses, then says, “Okay. I’m sorry.”

Dean thinks, _me too_. “Talk to the attendant. Or find someone who will give you a ride, someone who’s not a- a john. Or a demon. Can you tell anymore, demons from humans?”

“No,” Cas says. “Seeing souls was like- like seeing soft colors behind closed windows. But now I just see faces.”

Dean thinks about that for a bit. Strangers are unpredictable beings. “Okay. Be careful, then.”

“Yes. Of course.”

Silence hangs between them.

“Cas,” Dean says. “What did my soul look like?”

“Like a candle,” Cas says, without hesitation. “Gold. And warm.”

Dean doesn’t know what to say to something like that, so he says nothing. His lungs feel wound tight.

“When I come home,” Cas says, “will you be waiting?”

“Yeah.” Dean swallows the lump in his throat, tries again. “Yeah, of course. I want you here. Sam does too, I know he does. When he wakes up, we’ll- the three of us, you know. We’ll get the band back together.”

“I’d like that,” Cas says. “I miss you. Is that strange?”

“No,” says Dean. “I miss you, too. I miss you like hell, Cas.”

There’s a silence. He said something wrong, of course he did, and now Cas is- okay. This silence is going on for way too long. “Cas?” Nothing. More anxious, now: “Cas?”

Still nothing. Son-of-a-bitch hung up on him.

**

Dean waits, tense, for days. He agonizes over the radio silence. He imagines the worst, of course – another demon caught up with Cas, or his wound reopened and he’s bled out, or he’s stranded on the side of the road.

Dean gets snappish, even with Sam’s nurses. He punches the walls. He kicks his chair over, and then he stoops to pick it up, and then he kicks it over again. He waits, and waits. And waits.

On the third day, he calls Charlie. She does, after all, know more about waiting for coma patients than anyone else he knows. They talk for half an hour, and she gives him comfort and advice. When he hangs up, he looks at the phone screen and sees one missed call. It’s from two minutes ago, from an unfamiliar area code. Cas.

He hits the redial button until his thumb gets tired, and then he gets up and paces while it rings. Finally, someone answers in Spanish.

“Hello?” Dean asks. “Hello, anyone there? Do you speak English?”

“Yes,” the man says through a thick accent. “You call a payphone. Who is this?”

“Hey, hey, listen. Is there somebody else there? Guy in a trench coat, black hair, white skin, blue eyes?”

“Yes, maybe, but he wears a wool sweater, not trench coat. He’s far away now, _señor_.”

“That’s my friend! Please, I need to talk to him, can you-”

The man must understand, because Dean hears him shout, away from the phone, “ _Señor_! Hey! Hey, you!”

“Cas!” Dean says. “Castiel! His name’s Castiel.”

“Castiel! Yes, you! Your friend, on the phone, he says he need speak with you.”

And then there’s a silence, a terrible, terrible silence. The sound of rustling fabric, like wings, and then, oh, thank God. “Dean?”

“ _Cas_. Cas. Is everything okay?”

“You called back.”

“I was on the phone with Charlie, crap. I’m sorry. What’s going on, what’s wrong?”

Cas says, “Nothing. I mean. I thought you wanted me to call, even if nothing was wrong.”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course. But Cas, you. You haven’t called in three days. You hung up on me, and I thought-”

“Oh. Yes, right. I ran out of coins, and the payphone – it cut off. International calls are expensive, I think. I didn’t have access to another phone until now.”

Dean feels his stomach drop. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So you mean all this, all this stuff I’ve been feeling, these past three days – I’ve been worried sick, man, I thought you were hurt, or dead, or-”

“No, no, I’m fine. My injury is healing well.”

Dean curses. “You can’t do that to me, buddy.”

“Are _you_ okay?”

He thinks about that. “Yeah. I guess. Relieved, mostly.”

“I am sorry. I am.”

“Yeah. I know. Just. I need you here.”

There’s a moment, where they both consider this. Cas says, “I’m in Mexico. I should be in Mexico City by tonight.”

“Do you have, I mean, do you have any money? For a motel. Or a bus.”

“Yes, some. There was a man, in Guatemala. A kind man, old. I think his soul, his soul would have been the color of tree roots. I would have liked to see it.”

“Okay, Cas,” Dean says, because Cas does this sometimes, goes off on tangents about a dusty yellow cat in an alleyway or the texture of the clouds over the sunrise. Dean likes that, most days. The hospital is dull, and Dean’s always wanted to travel south. And there is something he likes in the idea of Cas traveling, along rivers and roads, nothing in his pockets. Traveling back here, back home, back to Dean.

“I don’t have any paperwork. How am I going to get back into the United States?”

Right, Dean thinks. “I’ll work on that. I’ll talk to Charlie. Call me again, soon. We’ll figure it out, Cas. We’ll get you home. I promise.”

Maybe promises are empty between them, after all this time. But Dean will hold himself to this one. He will.

“Okay,” Cas says. They say that a lot, in these phone conversations. Dean thinks, for the first time in a long time, they might be okay. They might be getting better, even.

**

That night, he dreams that Cas is bleeding out in the middle of an empty field, red soaking thick and viscous into the dry green of summer grass. Dean stands miles away and meters away, both at once, and he is shouting, he is screaming, but Cas can’t hear him. Cas is looking at the sky, his eyes glassy reflections of a bright, blinding blue. There is blood at the corners of his lips. Dean screams himself hoarse and hears nothing but a loud, loud silence. He thinks about calling Cas, because maybe he can be heard over a phone line, but he pulls out his phone and he can’t remember any numbers. And then he is bleeding too, bleeding inside and outside and there is blood in his eyes and his mouth and his ears and he is drowning, he’s going back to Hell, he’s going back to Hell and there’s no one to pull him out this time.

Dean wakes with a start. The hospital room is dark and cool and his back aches from sleeping in a plastic chair. His hands are shaking as he rubs them over his face.

He wishes he could call Cas.

Sam’s heartbeat ticks a steady beep through the silence, and Dean slows his breathing to match it. He sits on his hands until they steady, too.

Cas will call. He will.

**

Two days later. A ringing phone.

“Cas,” Dean says. “Cas, tell me that’s you.”

“You sound- distressed. Is everything all right?”

“No, I’m fine. I’m fine. Talk to me.”

“I need to know how to hotwire a car.”

“Okay.”

So Dean talks him through that, and all the while, he thinks, _this is not what I should be teaching Cas about humanity_. He doesn’t want to have to teach Cas how to stitch up a wound or steal a car, not over the phone. He wants to teach Cas about good food and good movies and good kissing. Especially that last one. He thinks he could be a pretty fine teacher with that last one. God, he wants it, he wants all of it.

“I talked to Garth,” Dean says. “He’s another hunter. You can trust him. He’s gonna meet you at the border, help you get through. Charlie’s got your paperwork all lined up. We have some connections. I talked to Jody. It’s gonna- we’re gonna get you home, okay?”

“Soon,” Cas says. “A couple of days, maybe. I- I considered stealing a car before, but couldn’t bring myself to. Now, I just. I just want to be home.”

“Yeah.” Dean takes a shaky breath. “Garth has money and clothes for you. He’ll help you buy a bus ticket. And then you’ll be here.”

 “I should go,” Cas says. “I’ll drive through the night. This might be the last time I call you.”

Dean thinks about saying _I’ll see you soon_ , but that seems too optimistic. So he sticks with, “Take care.” He waits for Cas to hang up first.

**

Garth calls, two days later, to tell him Cas is safely in America. Garth bought him a motel room and a bus ticket, left him passed out on the bed with a change of clothes, a shotgun, a wad of money, and directions.

“So you’re good now, right, Dean-my-man?”

“Yeah, uh, Garth-my-man. Thank you. Seriously.”

“Anything for an old hunting buddy,” Garth says, and wow, this guy is weird, but Dean still kind of likes him anyway. Plus, what he’s just done for Cas, that means something.

“If you ever need something, anything-”

“I’ll hit you up. You betcha.”

That seems like enough. Dean isn’t really a touchy-feely guy, or at least he likes to think he isn’t. He figures Garth knows how grateful he is.

Everything is going fast now, blurring in front of Dean’s eyes. The doctor says Sam’s brain activity is skyrocketing, that he might be waking up any day now. And Cas is in the country, Cas is nearly here. All these weeks and Cas is on his way.

He waits, impatiently, for a day and a half. And then the hospital door blows open, and Cas is standing right there, right in front of him. Cas is wearing a wool sweater and worn blue jeans.

“Oh,” says Cas.

“Cas,” says Dean. He thinks he could kiss Cas, right here, right now. “Long time, no see.”

Cas stands rooted in the doorway. His face does this sudden crumpling thing, and then there are tears dripping down his cheeks. He covers them up with a hand and makes this kind of choked noise.

“Cas,” says Dean, like a goddamn broken record. He clears his throat, because he feels something hot and unexpected welling up in his eyes too. He's not supposed to do that kind of thing.

“I’m sorry,” Cas says, muffled through his fingers and his tears. “I’m sorry, I just. I really missed you. I didn’t know how much I missed you but I really missed you. I thought I was going to die.”

Dean gets up. He walks across the room and he puts his hands on Cas’s forearms. “Hey,” he says. “Hey, it’s okay.” Then he puts his arms around Cas, and something that was knotted in his muscles loosens.

Cas makes fists against Dean’s shoulder blades, his fingers clenching in the fabric. He buries his face in the curve of Dean’s neck. Dean kisses the spot behind his ear, the only spot he can reach. Dean can kiss his lips later. They have time for that, for all of it.

 

 

 

 

.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2J-0EtsCpo) of the same name by the Head and the Heart.  
> Thanks to [Tasha](http://kraziiisme.tumblr.com/) for editing.  
> Thanks to all for reading.
> 
> Crossposted on [tumblr](http://shootingstarcas.tumblr.com/post/105488178546/rivers-and-roads-a-post-s8-fic-deancas-3-6k)


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